THE CAMP OF BOULOGNE
My uncle was still standing at the castle gateway, the very picture of a
usurper, with our own old coat-of-arms of the bend argent and the three
blue martlets engraved upon the stones at either side of him. He gave
me no sign of greeting as I mounted the large grey horse which was
awaiting me, but he looked thoughtfully at me from under his down-drawn
brows, and his jaw muscles still throbbed with that stealthy rhythmical
movement. I read a cold and settled malice in his set yellow face and
his stern eyes. For my own part I sprang readily enough into the
saddle, for the man's presence had, from the first, been loathsome to
me, and I was right glad to be able to turn my back upon him. And so,
with a stern quick order from the lieutenant and a jingle and clatter
from the troopers, we were off upon our journey. As I glanced back at
the black keep of Grosbois, and at the sinister figure who stood looking
after us from beside the gateway, I saw from over his head a white
handkerchief gleam for an instant in a last greeting from one of the
gloomy meurtriere windows, and again a chill ran through me as I thought
of the fearless girl and of the hands in which we were leaving her.
But sorrow clears from the mind of youth like the tarnish of breath upon
glass, and who could carry a heavy heart upon so lightfooted a horse and
through so sweet an air? The white glimmering road wound over the downs
with the sea far upon the left, and between lay that great salt-marsh
which had been the scene of our adventures. I could even see, as I
fancied, a dull black spot in the distance to mark the position of that
terrible cottage. Far away the little clusters of houses showed the
positions of Etaples, Ambleterre, and the other fishing villages, whilst
I could see that the point which had seemed last night to glow like a
half-forged red-hot sword-blade was now white as a snow-field with the
camp of a great army. Far, far away, a little dim cloud upon the water
stood for the land where I had spent my days--the pleasant, homely land
which will always rank next to my own in my affections.
And now I turned my attention from the downs and the sea to the hussars
who rode beside me, forming, as I could perceive, a guard rather than an
escort. Save for the patrol last night, they were the first of the
famous soldiers of Napoleon whom I had ever seen, and it was with
admiration and curiosity that I looked upon men who had won a world-wide
reputation for their discipline and their gallantry. Their appearance
was by no means gorgeous, and their dress and equipment was much more
modest than that of the East Kent Yeomanry, which rode every Saturday
through Ashford; but the stained tunics, the worn leathers, and the
rough hardy horses gave them a very workmanlike appearance. They were
small, light, brown-faced fellows, heavily whiskered and moustached,
many of them wearing ear-rings in their ears. It surprised me that even
the youngest and most boyish-looking of them should be so bristling with
hair, until, upon a second look, I perceived that his whiskers were
formed of lumps of black wax stuck on to the sides of his face. The
tall young lieutenant noticed the astonishment with which I gazed at his
boyish trooper.
'Yes, yes,' said he, 'they are artificial, sure enough; but what can you
expect from a lad of seventeen? On the other hand, we cannot spoil the
appearance of the regiment upon parade by having a girl's cheeks in the
ranks.'
'It melts terribly in this warm weather, lieutenant,' said the hussar,
joining in the conversation with the freedom which was one of the
characteristics of Napoleon's troops.
'Well, well, Caspar, in a year or two you will dispense with them.'
'Who knows? Perhaps he will have dispensed with his head also by that
time,' said a corporal in front, and they all laughed together in a
manner which in England would have meant a court-martial. This seemed
to me to be one of the survivals of the Revolution, that officer and
private were left, upon a very familiar footing, which was increased, no
doubt, by the freedom with which the Emperor would chat with his old
soldiers, and the liberties which he would allow them to take with him.
It was no uncommon thing for a shower of chaff to come from the ranks
directed at their own commanding officers, and I am sorry to say, also,
that it was no very unusual thing for a shower of bullets to come also.
Unpopular officers were continually assassinated by their own men; at
the battle of Montebello it is well known that every officer, with the
exception of one lieutenant belonging to the 24th demi-brigade, was shot
down from behind. But this was a relic of the bad times, and, as the
Emperor gained more complete control, a better feeling was established.
The history of our army at that time proved, at any rate, that the
highest efficiency could be maintained without the flogging which was
still used in the Prussian and the English service, and it was shown,
for the first time, that great bodies of men could be induced to act
from a sense of duty and a love of country, without hope of reward or
fear of punishment. When a French general could suffer his division to
straggle as they would over the face of the country, with the certainty
that they would concentrate upon the day of battle, he proved that he
had soldiers who were worthy of his trust.
One thing had struck me as curious about these hussars--that they
pronounced French with the utmost difficulty. I remarked it to the
lieutenant as he rode by my side, and I asked him from what foreign
country his men were recruited, since I could perceive that they were
not Frenchmen.
'My faith, you must not let them hear you say so,' said he, 'for they
would answer you as like as not by a thrust from their sabres. We are
the premier regiment of the French cavalry, the First Hussars of
Bercheny, and, though it is true that our men are all recruited in
Alsace, and few of them can speak anything but German, they are as good
Frenchmen as Kleber or Kellermann, who came from the same parts.
Our men are all picked, and our officers,' he added, pulling at his
light moustache, 'are the finest in the service.'
The swaggering vanity of the fellow amused me, for he cocked his busby,
swung the blue dolman which hung from his shoulder, sat his horse, and
clattered his scabbard in a manner which told of his boyish delight and
pride in himself and his regiment. As I looked at his lithe figure and
his fearless bearing, I could quite imagine that he did himself no more
than justice, while his frank smile and his merry blue eyes assured me
that he would prove a good comrade. He had himself been taking
observations of me, for he suddenly placed his hand upon my knee as we
rode side by side.
'I trust that the Emperor is not displeased with you,' said he, with a
very grave face.
'I cannot think that he can be so,' I answered, 'for I have come from
England to put my services at his disposal.'
'When the report was presented last night, and he heard of your presence
in that den of thieves, he was very anxious that you should be brought
to him. Perhaps it is that he wishes you to be guide to us in England.
No doubt you know your way all over the island.'
The hussar's idea of an island seemed to be limited to the little
patches which lie off the Norman or Breton coast. I tried to explain to
him that this was a great country, not much smaller than France.
'Well, well,' said he, 'we shall know all about it presently, for we are
going to conquer it. They say in the camp that we shall probably enter
London either next Wednesday evening or else on the Thursday morning.
We are to have a week for plundering the town, and then one army corps
is to take possession of Scotland and another of Ireland.'
His serene confidence made me smile. 'But how do you know you can do
all this?' I asked.
'Oh!' said he, 'the Emperor has arranged it.'
'But they have an army, and they are well prepared. They are brave men
and they will fight.'
'There would be no use their doing that, for the Emperor is going over
himself,' said he; and in the simple answer I understood for the first
time the absolute trust and confidence which these soldiers had in their
leader. Their feeling for him was fanaticism, and its strength was
religion, and never did Mahomet nerve the arms of his believers and
strengthen them against pain and death more absolutely than this little
grey-coated idol did to those who worshipped him. If he had chosen--and
he was more than once upon the point of it--to assert that he was
indeed above humanity he would have found millions to grant his claim.
You who have heard of him as a stout gentleman in a straw hat, as he was
in his later days, may find it hard to understand it, but if you had
seen his mangled soldiers still with their dying breath crying out to
him, and turning their livid faces towards him as he passed, you would
have realised the hold which he had over the minds of men.
'You have been over there?' asked the lieutenant presently, jerking his
thumb towards the distant cloud upon the water.
'Yes, I have spent my life there.'
'But why did you stay there when there was such good fighting to be had
in the French service?'
'My father was driven out of the country as an aristocrat. It was only
after his death that I could offer my sword to the Emperor.'
'You have missed a great deal, but I have no doubt that we shall still
have plenty of fine wars. And you think that the English will offer us
battle?'
'I have no doubt of it.'
'We feared that when they understood that it was the Emperor in person
who had come they would throw down their arms. I have heard that
there are some fine women over there.'
'The women are beautiful.'
He said nothing, but for some time he squared his shoulders and puffed
out his chest, curling up the ends of his little yellow moustache.
'But they will escape in boats,' he muttered at last; and I could see
that he had still that picture of a little island in his imagination.
'If they could but see us they might remain. It has been said of the
Hussars of Bercheny that they can set a whole population running, the
women towards us, the men away. We are, as you have no doubt observed,
a very fine body of men, and the officers are the pick of the service,
though the seniors are hardly up to the same standard as the rest of
us.'
With all his self-confidence, this officer did not seem to me to be more
than my own age, so I asked him whether he had seen any service. His
moustache bristled with indignation at my question, and he looked me up
and down with a severe eye.
'I have had the good fortune to be present at nine battles, sir, and at
more than forty skirmishes,' said he. 'I have also fought a
considerable number of duels, and I can assure you that I am always
ready to meet anyone--even a civilian--who may wish to put me to the
proof.'
I assured him that he was very fortunate to be so young and yet to have
seen so much, upon which his ill-temper vanished as quickly as it came,
and he explained that he had served in the Hohenlinden campaign under
Moreau, as well as in Napoleon's passage of the Alps, and the campaign
of Marengo.
'When you have been with the army for a little time the name of Etienne
Gerard will not be so unfamiliar to you,' said he. 'I believe that I
may claim to be the hero of one or two little stories which the soldiers
love to tell about their camp fires. You will hear of my duel with the
six fencing masters, and you will be told how, single-handed, I charged
the Austrian Hussars of Graz and brought their silver kettledrum back
upon the crupper of my mare. I can assure you that it was not by
accident that I was present last night, but it was because Colonel
Lasalle was very anxious to be sure of any prisoners whom he might make.
As it turned out, however, I only had the one poor chicken-hearted
creature, whom I handed over to the provost-marshal.'
'And the other--Toussac?'
'Ah, he seems to have been a man of another breed. I could have asked
nothing better than to have had him at my sword-point. But he has
escaped. They caught sight of him and fired a pistol or two, but he
knew the bog too well, and they could not follow him.'
'And what will be done to your prisoner?' I asked.
Lieutenant Gerard shrugged his shoulders.
'I am very sorry for Mademoiselle your cousin,' said he, 'but a fine
girl should not love such a man when there are so many gallant soldiers
upon the country side. I hear that the Emperor is weary of these
endless plottings, and that an example will be made of him.'
Whilst the young hussar and I had been talking we had been cantering
down the broad white road, until we were now quite close to the camp,
which we could see lying in its arrangement of regiments and brigades
beneath us. Our approach lay over the high ground, so that we could see
down into this canvas city, with its interminable lines of picketed
horses, its parks of artillery, and its swarms of soldiers. In the
centre was a clear space, with one very large tent and a cluster of low
wooden houses in the middle of it, with the tricolour banner waving
above them.
'That is the Emperor's quarters, and the smaller tent there is the
headquarters of General Ney, who commands this corps. You understand
that this is only one of several armies dotted along from Dunkirk in the
north to this, which is the most southerly. The Emperor goes from one
to the other, inspecting each in its turn, but this is the main body,
and contains most of the picked troops, so that it is we who see most of
him, especially now that the Empress and the Court have come to Pont de
Briques. He is in there at the present moment,' he added in a hushed
voice, pointing to the great white tent in the centre.
The road into the camp ran through a considerable plain, which was
covered by bodies of cavalry and infantry engaged upon their drill.
We had heard so much in England about Napoleon's troops, and their feats
had appeared so extraordinary, that my imagination had prepared me for
men of very striking appearance. As a matter of fact, the ordinary
infantry of the line, in their blue coats and white breeches and
gaiters, were quite little fellows, and even their high brass-covered
hats and red plumes could not make them very imposing.
In spite of their size, however, they were tough and wiry, and after
their eighteen months in camp they were trained to the highest pitch of
perfection. The ranks were full of veterans, and all the under-officers
had seen much service, while the generals in command have never been
equalled in ability, so that it was no mean foe which lay with its
menacing eyes fixed upon the distant cliffs of England. If Pitt had not
been able to place the first navy in the world between the two shores
the history of Europe might be very different to-day.
Lieutenant Gerard, seeing the interest with which I gazed at the
manoeuvring troops, was good enough to satisfy my curiosity about such
of them as approached the road along which we were journeying.
'Those fellows on the black horses with the great blue rugs upon their
croups are the Cuirassiers,' said he. 'They are so heavy that they
cannot raise more than a trot, so when they charge we manage that there
shall be a brigade of chasseurs or hussars behind them to follow up the
advantage.'
'Who is the civilian who is inspecting them?' I asked.
'That is not a civilian, but it is General St. Cyr, who is one of those
whom they called the Spartans of the Rhine. They were of opinion that
simplicity of life and of dress were part of a good soldier, and so they
would wear no uniform beyond a simple blue riding coat, such as you see.
St. Cyr is an excellent officer, but he is not popular, for he seldom
speaks to anyone, and he sometimes shuts himself up for days on end in
his tent, where he plays upon his violin. I think myself that a soldier
is none the worse because he enjoys a glass of good wine, or has a smart
jacket and a few Brandenburgs across his chest. For my part I do both,
and yet those who know me would tell you that it has not harmed my
soldiering. You see this infantry upon the left?'
'The men with the yellow facings?'
'Precisely. Those are Oudinot's famous grenadiers. And the other
grenadiers, with the red shoulder-knots and the fur hats strapped above
their knapsacks, are the Imperial Guard, the successors of the old
Consular Guard who won Marengo for us. Eighteen hundred of them got the
cross of honour after the battle. There is the 57th of the line, which
has been named "The Terrible," and there is the 7th Light Infantry, who
come from the Pyrenees, and who are well known to be the best marchers
and the greatest rascals in the army. The light cavalry in green are
the Horse Chasseurs of the Guard, sometimes called the Guides, who are
said to be the Emperor's favourite troops, although he makes a great
mistake if he prefers them to the Hussars of Bercheny. The other
cavalry with the green pelisses are also chasseurs, but I cannot tell
from here what regiment they are. Their colonel handles them admirably.
They are moving to a flank in open column of half-squadrons and then
wheeling into line to charge. We could not do it better ourselves. And
now, Monsieur de Laval, here we are at the gates of the Camp of
Boulogne, and it is my duty to take you straight to the Emperor's
quarters.'